Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T08:18:31.420Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Hybridity, Vacuity, and Blockage: Visions of Chaos from Anthropological Theory, Island Melanesia, and Central Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2005

Michael W. Scott
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science

Extract

Marshall Sahlins (1996) argues that anthropology has been the bearer of a “bourgeoisified” Judeo-Christian cosmology according to which an original state of chaos, akin to the Hobbesian state of nature, gives way to the order of society or the state. The central conundrum that this anthropology has sought to explain is how fallen and needy individuals come together in cooperative organization. Sahlins furthermore contends that, by universalizing this problematic as the key to interpreting human societies and social action, anthropology has subverted its attempts at cross-cultural understanding. My aim in this paper is to draw attention to a growing commitment within anthropology to a different cosmological paradigm with an inverse structure. Today, the elevation of ethnic and cultural hybridity as both an approximate return to primordial human unity and an emancipatory moral high ground renders socio-cultural difference at once the presumed telos of many social practices and a scandal to be overcome. Whereas the older anthropological cosmology uncovered by Sahlins posited progress from atomistic privation to social solidarity, this new cosmology posits the politically motivated splintering of essential human unity by the construction of ethnicity and culture. Although I iterate the caution that this emergent paradigm too has the potential to reproduce itself as ethnography, I emphasize as more important its promising and troubling potential to revalorize anthropological thinking on cosmology. Specifically, ownership of the meta-cosmology encoded in hybridity theory ought to prompt anthropologists to question our recently acquired aversion to the idea that cosmologies inform human action. At the same time, however, we need to scrutinize our fascination with hybridity for signs of an unintentionally Nietzschean glorification of dissolution or aestheticization of periodic destruction as the necessary foundation for political and moral renovation.

Type
The Critique of Anthropological Reason
Copyright
© 2005 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abu-Lughod Lila 1991 Richard G. Fox Writing Against Culture Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present Santa Fe School of American Research Press 137–62
Aggarwal Ravina 2001 At the Margins of Death: Ritual Space and the Politics of Location in an Indo-Himalayan Border Village American Ethnologist 28 3 549–73
Allan Colin H. 1957 Customary Land Tenure in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate: Report of the Special Lands Commission Honiara Western Pacific High Commission
Appadurai Arjun 1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press
Appadurai Arjun 1998 Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of Globalization Public Culture 10 2 225–47
Ballinger Pamela 2004 “Authentic Hybrids” in the Balkan Borderlands Current Anthropology 45 1 31 60
Bennett Judith A. 2000 Pacific Forest: A History of Resource Control and Contest in Solomon Islands, c. 1800–1997 Boston Brill
Berlin Isaiah 1999 The Roots of Romanticism Princeton Princeton University Press
Bhabha Homi K. 1989 Location, Intervention, Incommensurability: A Conversation with Homi Bhabha Emergences 1 1 63 88
Bhabha Homi K. 1994 The Location of Culture London Routledge
Bonnemaison Joël 1994 The Tree and the Canoe: History and Ethnogeography of Tanna Josée Pénot-Demetry, trans. Honolulu University of Hawai'i Press
Brightman Robert 1995 Forget Culture: Replacement, Transcendence, Relexification Cultural Anthropology 10 4 509–46
Burt Ben 1994 Tradition and Christianity: The Colonial Transformation of a Solomon Islands Society New York Harwood Academic Publishers
Clifford James 1997 Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press
Comaroff Jean and John Comaroff 1991 Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa vol. 1 Chicago University of Chicago Press
Coppet Daniel de 1985 R. H. Barnes, Daniel de Coppet and R. J. Parkin Land Owns People Contexts and Levels: Anthropological Essays on Hierarchy Oxford The Anthropological Society 78–90
Dinnen Sinclair 2002 Winners and Losers: Politics and Disorder in the Solomon Islands 2000–2002 The Journal of Pacific History 37 3 285–98
Dirks Nicholas B. 1992 Colonialism and Culture Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press
Eliade Mircea 1954 The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History Willard R. Trask, trans. Princeton Princeton University Press
Eliade Mircea 1959 The Sacred and the Profane Willard R. Trask, trans. New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Feuchtwang Stephan 2004 Stephan Feuchtwang Theorising Place Making Place: State Projects, Globilisation and Local Responses in China London UCL Press 3–30
Foucault Michel 1986 Of Other Spaces Diacritics 16 1 22 27
Fox Charles E. 1924 The Threshold of the Pacific New York Alfred A. Knopf
Fox James J. ed. 1997 The Poetic Power of Place: Comparative Perspectives on Austronesian Ideas of Locality Canberra Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University
Friedman Jonathan 1999 Indigenous Struggles and the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie Australian Journal of Anthropology 10 1 1 14
Friedman Jonathan 2002 Sing C. Chew and J. David Knottnerus Situating Hybridity: The Positional Logics of a Discourse Structure, Culture, and History: Recent Issues in Social Theory New York Rowman and Littlefield 125–47
Friedman Jonathan 2003 Jonathan Friedman Globalization, Dis-integration, Re-organization: The Transformations of Violence Globalization, the State, and Violence New York Altamira Press 1–34
Gow Peter 2001 An Amazonian Myth and Its History Oxford Oxford University Press
Guidieri Remo 1980 La route des morts Paris Seuil
Gupta Akhil and James Ferguson 1997 Akhil Gupta and James Ferguso Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference Culture Power Place Durham Duke University Press 33–51
Hernández Castillo R. Aída 2001 Histories and Stories from Chiapas: Border Identities in Southern Mexico Austin University of Texas Press
Herzfeld Michael 1992 The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy Chicago University of Chicago Press
Hviding Edvard 1993 Indigenous Essentialism? “Simplifying” Customary Land Ownership in New Georgia, Solomon Islands Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 149 802–24
Jones Rhys 1985 Ian Donaldson and Tamsin Donaldson Ordering the Landscape Seeing the First Australians London George Allen and Unwin 181–209
Kapferer Bruce 1997 The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power Chicago University of Chicago Press
Keesing Roger M. 1992 Custom and Confrontation: The Kwaio Struggle for Cultural Autonomy Chicago University of Chicago Press
Kuper Adam 1999 Culture: The Anthropologists' Account Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press
Lattas Andrew 1998 Cultures of Secrecy: Reinventing Race in Bush Kaliai Cargo Cults Madison University of Wisconsin Press
Lévi-Strauss Claude 1978 Myth and Meaning New York Schocken Books
Lewellen Ted 2002 Groping Toward Globalization: In Search of an Anthropology without Boundaries Reviews in Anthropology 31 73 89
Lincoln Bruce 1986 Myth, Cosmos, and Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and Destruction Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press
Malkki Liisa 1995 Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania Chicago University of Chicago Press
Masquelier Adeline 2002 Road Mythographies: Space, Mobility, and the Historical Imagination in Postcolonial Niger American Ethnologist 29 4 829–56
Moore Henrietta L. 1997 Interior Landscapes and External Worlds: The Return of Grand Theory in Anthropology The Australian Journal of Anthropology 8 2 125–44
Moore Henrietta L. 1999 Henrietta L. Moore Anthropological Theory at the Turn of the Century Anthropological Theory Today Cambridge Polity Press 1–23
Noyes John 1992 Colonial Space: Spatiality in the Discourse of German South West Africa 1884–1915 Philadelphia Harwood Academic Publishers
Rosaldo Renato 1989 Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis Boston Beacon Press
Sahlins Marshall 1996 The Sadness of Sweetness: The Native Anthropology of Western Cosmology Current Anthropology 37 3 395 428
Sahlins Marshall 2000 Lorraine Daston “Sentimental Pessimism” and Ethnographic Experience; or, Why Culture is not a Disappearing “Object.” Biographies of Scientific Objects Chicago University of Chicago Press 158–202
Scott Michael W. 2000 Ignorance is Cosmos; Knowledge is Chaos: Articulating a Cosmological Polarity in the Solomon Islands Social Analysis 44 2 56 83
Scott Michael W. 2001 Auhenua: Land, Lineage, and Ontology in Arosi (Solomon Islands) Ph.D. dissertation University of Chicago
Shryock Andrew 1997 Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan Berkeley University of California Press
Smith Brian K. 1989 Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion Oxford Oxford University Press
Spriggs Matthew 1997 The Island Melanesians Cambridge, Mass. Blackwell Publishers
Taylor Christopher C. 1992 Milk, Honey, and Money: Changing Concepts in Rwandan Healing Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution Press
Taylor Christopher C. 1999 Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 New York Berg
Thomas Nicholas 1994 Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government Princeton Princeton University Press
Thomas Philip 2002 The River, the Road, and the Rural-Urban Divide: A Postcolonial Moral Geography from Southeast Madagascar American Ethnologist 29 2 266–91
Valeri Valerio 1985 Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii Chicago University of Chicago Press
Valeri Valerio 1995 Miti Cosmogonici e Ordine Parole Chiave 7/8 93–110
Wasserstrom Steven M. 1999 Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos Princeton Princeton University Press
White Geoffrey M. 1991 Identity Through History: Living Stories in a Solomon Islands Society Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Williams Nancy M. 1986 The Yolngu and Their Land: A System of Land Tenure and the Fight for Its Recognition Stanford Stanford University Press
Young Robert J. C. 1995 Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race London Routledge